“Two.”

From out the motley, looking neither to right nor left, came Scotchman McPherson; but though he passed fair before the leader’s eyes and not a yard away, no number was spoken; no hint of recognition, of cognisance, crossed the latter’s face.  Implacable, relentless as time, he awaited the next in line, then voiced the one word:  “Three.”

On filed the line; close formed as convicts, as convicts silent—­halting at a lifted hand.  A moment they paused, one and twenty men who counted but as a score, started into motion, halted again; as by common consent every head save one of a sudden going bare.  Hitherto silent as they, the watching group back in the stockade had that instant found voice.  All but to the ground swept twenty sombreros as out over the prairies, out where no human ear could hear, rolled a cheer, and repeated, and again; tribute of Fort Yankton to those who went.  At the rear of the column one rider alone did not respond, apparently did not hear.  Implacable as Landor himself, he looked straight before him, awaited the silence that would bring with it renewed activity.

And it came.  With a single motion as before, every hat returned to its place, was drawn low over its owner’s eyes.  From his position by the gate Landor advanced, took the lead.  Behind him, impassive again as figures in a spectacle, the others fell in line.  At first a mere walk, the pace gradually quickened, became a canter, a trot.  By this time the confines of the tiny frontier town were passed.  Before them on the one hand, bordering on the river, stretched a range of low hills, dun-brown from its coat of sun-dried grass.  On the other, greener by contrast, glittering now in the level rays of the early morning sun on myriad dew-drops, and seemingly endless, unrolled the open prairie.  Straight into this Landor led the way, and as he did so the cavalcade for the first time broke into a gallop; not the fierce, short-lived pace of civilisation, but the long-strided, full-lunged lope of the frontier, which accurately and as tirelessly as a clock measures time, counts off the passing miles.  Hitherto a preliminary, at last the play was on.

Sixty-odd miles as migrates the sandhill crane, separated the settlements of Yankton and Sioux Falls.  Trackless as a desert was the prairie, minus even the buffalo trails of a quarter century before; yet with the sun only as guide, they forged ahead, straight as a line drawn taut from point to point.  Nothing stopped their advance, nothing made them turn aside.  Seemingly destitute of animal life, the country fairly teemed at their approach.  Grouse, typical of the prairie as the blue-faced anemone, were everywhere; singly, in coveys, in flocks.  Troops of antelope, startled in their morning feeding, scurried away from the path of the invaders; curious as children, paused on the safety of the nearest rise, to watch the horsemen out of sight.  Every marshy spot, every prairie